


The Heretic's Daughter

by Mintywolf



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, Prequel, well currently
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3560852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintywolf/pseuds/Mintywolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The world must look different when you're the daughter of Lord Braska." What would have happened to Yuna - and everyone else - if Braska had failed to defeat Sin?  Left stranded and friendless not as the beloved High Summoner's daughter, but an orphan only known as the child of a heretic and a heathen, the child molded by the unloving hand of Bevelle turns her thoughts to Zanarkand and the Final Aeon nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Prologue

The execution was not scheduled to take place until midmorning, but a crowd had been gathering on the steps of the Palace of St. Bevelle since dawn. It was composed of a diverse assortment of clergy, off-duty warrior monks, and ordinary civilians, from the bent elderly with joints aching from the long wait to fidgety children perched on the shoulders of their parents to get a better look. Most of them were citizens of Bevelle, but some had come from as far away from Besaid. Everyone was eager to see Yevon’s most hated enemy, apart from Sin itself – of course – brought to justice.

At last the awaited hour arrived and temple doors slid ponderously open to admit the magisterial procession. At its head was the Grand Maester, flanked by a column of warrior monks, moving slowly with stately gravitas. The onlookers parted silently before him until they lined the steps from the temple to the palace in two unbroken rows of watching faces. When the prisoner appeared a whisper rippled through the crowd like a breeze moving a swirl of snow across the surface of Lake Macalania, but no louder.

She was barely visible amid the phalanx of guards surrounding her, the shortest of which was still a head and shoulders taller than she was. The armored figures to every side of her moved along like automatons, in programmed step with each other with every heavy, booted tread, their faces stolid and featureless behind the visors of their helmets. Between them the fleeting sight of the girl was so small, so incongruously delicate and vulnerable, that it was difficult to reconcile her with the enormity of the crimes of which she had been convicted. She had a pale, doll-like fragility about her, and her solemn, porcelain face looked as innocent as a bride’s.

The procession pressed through the dense, expectant hush measured out by a deep, somber tolling of the temple bells. As the heretic passed between them, some of the spectators sneered, and some scowled, and some lowered their eyes. The girl herself did not look to either side, but walked on with small, even steps, her back straight, her eyes fixed straight ahead. Her hands were bound before her with a length of chain but she moved with a serene grace that those among them who had seen her before recognized but could not quite place. There was no fear in her face, merely a quiet resignation.

Slowly the procession mounted the steps and assembled before the doors of palace, as the clutter of onlookers coalesced at the foot of the stairs behind a barrier of guards. The prisoner teetered a little as she was turned to face the audience on the edge of the step but managed to steady herself, and stood up straight. Her gaze moved once over the assembly with a sorrowful heaviness, and then drifted up over the city that hated her, past the gilded domes and pinnacles of the temple, to the sky, which was the same piercingly brilliant blue as it had been the last time she stood here, on her wedding day. One of her eyes reflected that vault of endless Spiran blue; the other was as green as sin.

“Summoner Yuna,” Maester Mika addressed her from the side in a frail, reedy voice, “You stand convicted of acts of heresy,” he paused as if preparing himself for the next step of a climb up a steep incline, “blasphemy,” again a pause, “treason, and other crimes, heinous in nature, against Yevon and the people of Spira. For this you have been sentenced to execution by firing squad. Have you anything to say, before your end?”

A vagrant gust of wind rifled with a flap among the hangings on the palace wall, fluttered through the silk sleeves of the summoner’s robe, and scattered a few strands of her fine, light hair about her grave and childlike face. She looked down from the sky.

“People of Spira,” she began softly, in a voice so small the breeze could barely carry it to the ears of the listeners. “I am sorry—” she made an effort to strengthen her voice, and began again, “All my life, I have only wanted to love Spira, and its people. I’m sorry that you couldn’t love me in return.”

A discontented murmur rumbled through the crowd, gathering momentum like a rolling boulder. They had not come here to be shamed and reprimanded by a heretic. Maester Mika raised his hands for order, and then appeared to decide it was best to continue with the proceedings before the unrest became unruliness. He gestured to one of the warrior monks at his side, who had borne the summoner’s rod during the procession like a ceremonial object. At the Grand Maester’s signal, he raised it horizontally before him, the little silver bell on its end tinkling faintly, and snapped its shaft over one armored knee.

The summoner flinched as though she had been struck. She raised her shackled hands, and a few people in the front rows of the assembly gasped, fearing the spellcaster’s retribution, but she only brushed her hair out of her face and let them fall again. The Grand Maester made a curling gesture with his hand, and the line of soldiers converged across the top of the stairs. In one unified movement, they raised their rifles, drew back the hammers, and aimed them at the white and solitary form of the summoner.

The taut, still air reverberated with a deafening report like a cannon blast, but the sound had not come from the guns, which never had the chance to fire. An unknown glyph appeared etched in the sky like a lightning strike, and through its revolving arcane lines soared a great, dark and shining beast. Its arrival sent a shockwave radiating out in ripples that seemed to warp and then fracture the sky like mirror-glass.

“Sin!” screamed someone in horror, and then someone else, “No – It’s an _aeon!_ ”

It was an aeon, _the_ Aeon, the destroyer-savior from the end of the world, the only known thing with the strength to conquer Sin. And it was headed for Bevelle.

The beast swerved up against the darkening sky, unfurling wings that were the livid purple of stormclouds, or bruises, farther and farther with an impossible wingspan that seemed to block out the sun. There it hung for a moment, white as winter and dark as terror, seeming to take in the scene below – the scattering crowds, the scrambling warriors, the cowering priests, and amid it all the still and unwavering figure of the summoner – with the burning gaze of its one visible brilliant eye set into its flawlessly sculpted face like a ruby. Then it folded its wings and descended in a graceful, spiraling arc towards the Palace of St. Bevelle.

In its wake there trailed a blizzard like the tail of a comet, freezing the palace’s decorative waterfalls into abstract glass sculptures and powdering the marble columns, the gold-leafed minarets, the carved arches, and the steep, tiered steps with a fine layer of frost. The execution squad realigned their aim onto the approaching Aeon but the upward shower of bullets never seemed to hit, despite the tremendous size of the beast; between one moment and the next it had somehow swirled itself out of the way, lithe and lissome as smoke.

Fleeing crowds of onlookers who had come to see the execution jostled each other in a panic to get away from the Aeon’s spreading shadow, slipping on the steps that were becoming rapidly treacherous with ice. The powerful downdraft from its wings carried with it a heavy perfume of lilac and sent everyone, from Grand Maester to schoolchild, carelessly sprawling into the falling snow. Only the captive summoner remained standing.

In accompaniment to its own strange music from the silver chains that dangled from the heavy leather straps bound about its limbs, the wooden beads that swung and clacked on the ends of the inky ropes of its hair, the glass ornaments clinking and rattling above its head, and the wind from its slowly beating wings, the creature descended and hovered in the air before her. A smile split the pale solemnity of her face and she stretched out her arms to the beautiful and terrible beast like someone reaching to embrace an old and longed-for friend.

_“Lulu.”_

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Chapter One

The snow had condensed into a cold, steady fall of rain by the time they reached Bevelle. They had made good time, pressing on steadfastly through the night despite the rain that had transformed the snowy Calm Lands into one slogging, expansive pit of ankle-deep slush. Still, Braska hoped they were not too late.

It was disheartening to have to double back so near the end of his pilgrimage, and as each step towards Bevelle drew him closer to the place he had left his heart, with each step the dull, tender ache in his chest deepened. But beyond the slope down into the plains where the road ended there were no more settlements or temples. As far out as they had been, the only way to find help had been to return to the city.

It was not quite dawn when at last they trudged up the long, grave path along the Highbridge, towards the Temple of Yevon. No one else was about yet. Rain pattered musically into the channels on either side of the walkway, glided from the ornate columns that loomed over the bridge and glazed the panes of the tall, arched windows that looked down upon the sleeping city. Under other circumstances, the walk would have been quite lovely.

They had last left the temple under similar conditions, Braska recalled, and beside him Jecht seemed to remember too because he remarked, with pale humor, “How come whenever we come or go from this place we’re sneaking around in the dark like a buncha fugitives?”

Braska smiled thinly. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to give you a rain check on that parade you wanted.”

On his other side, Auron said nothing. In the wan, ethereal light that beamed down from the temple, Braska could just barely see his rain-wet face, tired and drawn but silent, and enduring. His eyes were fixed on his destination, and not on the wilted form of the young girl he was carrying in his arms.

They had found her alone and badly wounded at the edge of the Calm Lands. Her story, or what broken pieces of it Braska had managed to gather from her, had not been a happy one. He had tried to patch her up with white magic and bandages to the best of his ability, but it had quickly become apparent that she needed the aid of a professional. His skill had always been inclined more towards summoning than healing, and he had never had cause to regret it until that moment. So they had turned back, and retraced their long and weary trek across the wintry plains. They had taken turns carrying the girl, but Auron, who was the strongest, had borne her for the longest.

“How is she?” Braska asked. Auron shrugged a little, shifting her weight in his arms. The child did not stir. She was not very big, but as the night wore on she had grown progressively heavier, and Braska knew Auron’s arms had to be aching with fatigue by now. But he also knew he would never complain.

The child had herself made little sound apart from an occasional stifled whimper, which Braska had been unsure of whether to attribute to an unusually mature stoicism or merely shock. After a while she had sunk into a stupor, and he had urged them on faster, fearing that they were running out of time. It had been some time since she had made any noise. He could barely see her in the dim light, bundled loosely in Auron’s coat. Her face was nearly obscured by her dark hair which fell around it in sodden curls, and the most he could see of her was one pale knee that had slipped from beneath a fold of the coat. The exposed knee made her look pitifully defenseless, and he felt a need to reach over and cover it back up, but he feared that Auron would take it as a criticism.

Although he had said nothing more than a short affirmation of, “As you wish, my lord,” Braska felt that Auron had been silently judging his decision to forgo sending the girl’s dead companions, laying aside his duty as a summoner, in favor of getting the girl herself to safety as soon as possible. Even now he felt the guilt of those two unaccounted-for souls weighing him down like the rainwater that had soaked into his robes, but he felt he had made the right decision. At the crucial moment of the choice he had considered what he would have wanted, if it had been himself that a stranger had come upon dead, and little Yuna alone and hurt. Of the three of them, Auron was the only one who was not a father, but Braska hoped he would understand why he had chosen to save the child and leave the dead unguided.

Ahead, the temple frowned down upon them like the face of a stern but loving father greeting the return of an errant son. It was with some apprehension that he approached, as though he were expecting a reprimand. He had not thought he would ever pass between these doors again.

Inside, a monk on the night watch hurried over as they entered. “Lord Braska! We did not expect to see you again. Have you . . . returned to Bevelle?”

The unspoken question layered behind his words was, of course, _Have you given up your pilgrimage?_ Although his tone was respectful, Braska could feel the monk waiting to fault him for something.

“No, Brother,” replied Braska, and saw the monk shift uneasily a little at the clerical term of address coming from a heretic, even one who was a summoner, “My guardians and I are still on pilgrimage. We found this child wounded in the wilderness and have brought her to the temple seeking aid.”

The monk followed the gesture of his hand and startled, having not noticed her at first. “Of course. I shall bring you to the infirmary at once – right this way.” He led them into the temple through a twisting maze of corridors and back passages that were only half familiar to Braska, until they arrived in the hospital ward. “I believe this is the children’s infirmary,” said the monk by way of introduction, “But I’ve never been here before, myself.”

The only occupant of the tidy, white room was a young novice who appeared to be working the end of the night shift, and not very attentively; she was nodding off at a desk tucked into a corner of the room. When they entered she startled awake and sprang up, knocking a stack of books onto the floor. For a moment she only gaped at the tired and bedraggled summoner party dripping rainwater onto the formerly-pristine infirmary floor, as though uncertain whether she was really awake.

“Oh, my!” she squeaked, knelt to gather up the books, then seemed to think it more proper to remain standing in the presence of a summoner and scrambled to her feet again and then, for emphasis, performed a respectful Yevon bow to apologize. She must have been too young to recognize him, even by reputation, because there was nothing but deference in her manner. “Lord Summoner, Sir Guardians, what . . . seems to be the trouble?”

“This child needs medical attention,” said Auron curtly, with a clear exhaustion of patience for the elaborate social niceties of Bevelle, and crossed the room to unload his burden – not ungently – onto one of the beds. As the novice came scurrying over he unwound her arms from his neck, unwrapped her from his coat, and stepped back, removing himself from the situation.

“Oh, my!” peeped the young woman again, this time with a note of horror. Braska was dismayed to see that in the steady glow of the infirmary lamps the poor child looked even worse than she had when the light had last allowed him a good look at her, the previous evening. She was barely breathing, through lips so purple with cold they appeared bruised, and the rain-washed pallor of her face was only a few shades removed from the sheets on which she lay. The brightest bit of color about her was the blood still seeping crimson through the bandages.

The novice visibly steeled herself and began to look her over, but appeared not to even know where to begin taking stock of her wounds. “I’ll go fetch Sister Betony,” she said hastily, and made a rush for the door that did not quite prevent her from colliding with the footboard of the bed. Its occupant moaned faintly as she was jostled, the first sound they had heard from her in a long time.

Braska laid down his staff, knelt beside the bed, and took one of her small, cold hands in both of his. He wished, not for the first time, that he knew her name, and how old she was, and which city, or island, or little village was her home. He wondered if anyone was looking for her, and if they would ever manage to find her here.

She was wearing snow boots, and a prim, pretty black dress that looked like it had been meticulously kept before it had been torn and bloodied. Surely she had had a coat at one point, but now her arms were bare and scratched. Despite the obvious severity of her injuries, it was for some reason the sight of her knobby blue elbows, her skinned knee, her muddy petticoat, the missing button on her skirt, the stray tendrils of her hair coming loose from her braids, and the fragile, birdlike bones of her fingers between his hands that filled him with a soft and longing tenderness. The ache that had been coiled tight in his chest since they had first approached Bevelle suddenly swelled until it threatened to choke him. He wanted to take her in his arms as though she were his own little one and hold her.

But she had shied away from him when they had found her alone; when he had reached out and tried to comfort her, she had covered her bleeding face with her hands, drawing back into herself, and wept. The only words she had said to him were a plea, heartwrenching from one so young, of “Please . . . you have to come help my summoner.”

He had not been able to help.

In a few minutes the novice returned at the heels of a hastily-dressed nun, presumably the aforementioned Sister Betony. “Brother Zuke,” she greeted the monk, and then her eyes narrowed slightly as they settled on Braska and his companions, “Summoner.” Her attention, however, was at once arrested by the prone, pale figure on the bed and she hurried over. “Oh, the poor little thing!” she gushed, “Yvette, bring me hot water, a towel, and some salve. Don’t just stand there dithering, girl – go!”

She peeked under the bandage Braska had wrapped around her forehead, over her left eye, and winced. “What happened?” she demanded, looking up at them with thinly-veiled accusation.

“We found her in the Calm Lands, near Mt. Gagazet,” Braska explained quickly. He rose, but did not let go of her hand. “I did what I could to help her but . . . she needs a healer.”

“I can see that,” replied Sister Betony with a sniff. “She was alone?”

“Yes.” Braska could feel Auron looking at him, but he did not elaborate, although he knew there was more to the girl than he had let on. He suspected she was, or rather had been, a summoner’s guardian, bound by the same oath of loyalty as his own companions, at the end of a failed pilgrimage from which she had been the only survivor. But whatever the child’s story was, he felt it was her own to tell or withhold as she chose.

The novice, Yvette, returned with the requested articles and began setting them out on the bedside table at the nun’s direction. “Well, thank you for your assistance. I believe I can manage from here, if my lord and his guardians would care to take lodging in the temple for the rest of the night.”

It was less of an invitation than a dismissal, as much of one as she could give from her station. Braska knew she could not challenge his request, as a summoner, to stay if he wished, but there was nothing really more he could do and he did not want to make things worse for the girl by continuing to associate her with himself. He laid down her hand and straightened, his throat tight. “Thank you, then, Sister. We will take our leave.”

“Um,” said Jecht, who had been shuffling restlessly behind him for the duration of the conversation. He stepped forward and set the stuffed moogle toy he had been carrying since the Calm Lands next to the child’s pillow. Sister Betony regarded it with obvious misgivings, for it was a battered and woebegone looking thing, and mottled with dark, rusty stains that Braska realized with a sinking feeling were probably blood. “Belongs to the kid,” explained Jecht, “I think it’s important.”

“Very well.”

Yvette, eager to be of some use, showed them to the door while the nurse returned her attention to her patient.

“Poor little kid,” said Jecht, stretching his arms over his head with a cavernous yawn, “I hope she makes it.”

Auron shook the rainwater out of his coat with a snap and put it back on. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. At any rate, we’ve done all we can.”

“Mm,” replied Braska absently. The touch of her hand in his had reminded him so much of another little hand that had held his so trustingly until he had had to let it go that he feared he would begin to cry if he said anything more. He realized she was probably close by; he had left her in the care of the temple when he went away and the children’s dormitories couldn’t be far from here.

Jecht seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Hey! Wanna stop by and say hello to little Yuna before we head out? I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

He imagined going into her room and stroking her downy hair until she awoke, imagined the look of joy lighting up her face when the first thing she saw upon waking was him, her sweet and trebly voice crying out _Papa!_ as she put out her arms to be held. He imagined holding her, remembering the way her hair stuck up in the mornings, the charming and pleasant pudginess of her arms wrapped around his neck, the heaviness of her little head on his shoulder, the clean baby scent of the back of her neck. He wanted nothing more than to do just that, but he knew that if he did, he would never be able to leave Bevelle. He could not bear to say goodbye to Yuna for a second time.

“My lord?” asked Auron, coming to his side, for the weight of his heart had become in that moment too heavy to carry and he had stopped walking. He shook his head regretfully, speaking slowly to keep his voice from wavering.

“No. It would be . . . too confusing for her, I think. I told her I was going to defeat Sin and wouldn’t ever be coming back. Seeing me again would just upset her.”

“Yeah, I guess,” agreed Jecht, scuffing the floor with one bare foot.

“It’s late,” said Braska, to change the subject, “We should find somewhere to stay for the night.”

Auron nodded. “As you wish, my lord.”

Outside, the rain had not abated, and the dense canopy of clouds muffled the light of the rising dawn. Braska led the way through the endlessly long hallways of high, dark windows to the main area of the temple, feeling every step of the pilgrimage weighing on him as he did.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Chapter Two

Lulu at last waded out of sleep, struggling to shake off the last filmy tendrils of the dream that had been clinging to her like the fronds of underwater plants. It seemed as though a long time had passed since she had last been fully awake. For what had felt like days she had been lying like an exhausted swimmer cast onto an unfamiliar shore as a swirl of fever dreams, muddled with a dim half-wakefulness, had lapped over her in waves.

She opened her eyes, wincing at the sudden stab of brightness. The pain had lessened but there was still a dull throbbing in her head that collected behind her eyes when she tried to focus them. One of them was still covered by the bandage patched over the left side of her forehead. The first thing she could see was her battered old moogle doll, lying lifelessly beside her. It was looking a bit cleaner and fluffier than it had been before. Someone had mended it, and washed out the dirt and the bloodstains.

She was lying on a narrow bed which was not her own, with her unscarred cheek resting on a pillow that was warm beneath it from the weight of her head. Beside the bed she could see a small wooden table, upon which stood a basin with a damp terry cloth hanging over its rim. Underneath the blankets it was uncomfortably warm; she could feel her nightclothes clinging to her skin and her mouth was sticky with dryness.

The tugging question of where she was and how long she had been there prompted her to try to sit up. She felt very light and hollow, aware of her bones like a bundle of sticks pressing through her fragile skin into the mattress as she lay curled up on the bed, but at the same time it seemed to take a tremendous effort just to turn over and lift her head. She found herself in a spacious, scrubbed room with a row of eight simple brass bedsteads, one of which contained her pale, wispy self, lined neatly up against the back wall. Midafternoon daylight streamed in through the high, arched windows, reflecting a blinding, sterile whiteness from the walls, the curtains, the bleached and pressed sheets on the tidy little beds, and the apron of the approaching nun.

“You’re awake!” The relief audible in her voice bolstered Lulu’s suspicion that it had been some time since this had been the case. She hurried over to the side of the bed and pressed her somewhat forcefully back against the pillow as she managed to prop herself up on her elbows. “There, there. Don’t try to get up just yet. You’ve been very ill. You had a close call, little miss.” The nun fussed about her, straightening the tangled covers Lulu had tried to kick off. She had a plump, smiling, grandmotherly face, but her hands were too firm and persistent and Lulu wished she would go away.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, a question to which a response was prevented by the glass thermometer pushed into her mouth, even if she had felt inclined to speak. In truth, she felt terrible – aching and weak, and while she was clear-headed for the first time in a long while, the awakening lucidity of her memory was giving shape to things she didn’t want to think about just yet. The nurse, apparently unmindful of her lack of reply, took her pulse, checked the reading on the thermometer, inspected the dressing on her forehead, and then, without divulging any of her findings to their subject, continued to bustle about the room keeping up a steady conversation in which she did not seem to mind that she was the only participant.

“I must say, it’s a good thing that summoner party found you and brought you back here. What were you doing out there all by yourself? A child of your age should know better than to wander the Calm Lands alone. You’re lucky to be alive.” She checked herself, and then went on in a gentler tone, “But never you mind that. You just rest.” She crossed the room to a wall of shelves containing an array of bottled potions and began scanning the labels. All Lulu wanted at the moment was a drink of water, but she could not muster the voice to ask for it. Even if she had, she doubted she could have made her voice carry enough to be heard.

She reached up and gingerly probed her forehead. She could still feel the faint grooves of the scars below the edge of the bandage, following the line of her cheek. Not even the white magic of the summoner who had saved her had been able to erase them completely. The fiend that had struck her down had been a thing of much older, stronger, and darker magic than his, and its claws had been wicked, long, and sharp. With tentative fingers she began to feel beneath the bandage for the eye it had struck, then shuddered and left it alone. Truthfully, she was afraid to know what she would find. Reaching up, she straightened the part of her hair and drew her bangs down over her eye, so that her hair curled around the wounded half of her face and covered it. Half-hidden, she felt a bit better.

Slowly she managed to ease herself up into a sitting position against the pillow, even though she had to bite back a little cry of pain as she did. She discovered she was dressed in a plain, shapeless nightshirt that was too big for her and sliding from one of her shoulders. The sleeves came down over the backs of her hands. Underneath she could feel the constriction of more bandages bound tightly around her ribs, and one of her knees. Her long hair was unbound, which was not customary for it, and fell around her shoulders in a thick, dark mess of snarls that she despaired in ever getting out. Who had been so careless as to leave it unbraided, she wondered irritably as she began to run her fingers through it, working out the tangles as best she could. Catching sight of her hand, she noticed that they had removed the two small silver rings she had been wearing and even, for some reason, her purple nail polish.

Lulu looked up. Taking in the ornate panes of the windows, the Yevon scriptures on gilded hangings upon the walls, the orange and green habit of the nun, she began to realize where the “here” was to which she had been brought. Bevelle. Specifically, the Temple of Bevelle, capital of Spira, heart of Yevon.

Her heart sank. She had never been to Bevelle before, but it had been the next planned stop on her pilgrimage. Lady Ginnem had been telling her all about the beauty of the temple in the holy city that had once been her home, and everything they would see there when they came for her to pray for the blessing of the fayth. She had even promised they would look for a new winter coat to replace the old one that Lulu had been outgrowing, and which now lay on the floor of the cavern, torn apart by the fangs of fiends as Lulu herself very nearly had been. So she had come to Bevelle at last, but she had come alone.

She cast her gaze back down to her hands, which had given up on her hair as the little strength they had left them and were lying idly in her lap. If they hadn’t made the detour over the Calm Lands to seek out the hidden fayth there, in that forsaken valley where the rest of her companions had died, they would all be here together now.

Shame pricked at her eyes and pooled at the corners of her eyelids in hot, stinging drops. Lulu quickly lowered her head so that her hair fell forward, obscuring her face completely, before the nun could see the tears. The last thing she wanted right now was to be caught crying, and have her tears rewarded with empty reassurances from someone who could not possibly have known the reason for them. Fortunately the nun had her back to her, busy pouring the potion she had selected into a cup. Lulu surreptitiously scrubbed the tears away on the cuff of one too-long sleeve before they could escape her eyelashes.

The nurse returned to her bedside, bearing a blue-enameled cup and a kindly smile. “Drink this up, and you’ll feel better.” Lulu tried to say that she didn’t want it, even though she was thirsty, but her voice would not give shape to the words. She could only shake her head. The fixed smile on the face of the nun did not waver. “Now, now,” her voice slid into a saccharine, singsong lilt that made Lulu’s skin crawl, “You’ll never get better if you don’t take your medicine.” Realizing that her only hope of being left alone lay in doing what she was told, Lulu reached out to accept the proffered cup, embarrassed that she had to take it with both hands like a small child, and that the nurse had to steady it while she drank. The potion was bitter, and slid down her throat with an unpleasant slipperiness. “There’s a good girl,” said the nun, smiling in affected sympathy at the face Lulu had tried not to make, and took the cup away.

As the liquid settled uncomfortably in her stomach she began to feel a chain of creeping twinges spread out under her skin and along the edges of the still-healing wounds that started to draw together beneath the bandages. The long, deep ache began to subside, and she did feel better. In its wake there was left only a vague soreness that was more a weariness, as though she hadn’t been resting all this while. She drew the moogle into her arms and leaned her head back against the brass bars of the bedstead.

The nurse continued to prattle amiably, as though she felt that what Lulu had been longing for all this time was conversation. “The fever’s broken at last, praise be to Yevon. You should be on your feet again in a day or two. You’ve been through quite an ordeal, haven’t you? Poor baby. Maybe when you’re feeling up to it you can tell me all about it, hm?”

Lulu sank back into the pillow and drew her knees up defensively in front of herself. She had no intention of telling anyone all about it, ever. She couldn’t. Just the thought of retelling that story, with each step of the unwinding narrative drawing her back further into the nightmare-colored darkness of that cavern, amid the eerie, drifting dead lights of the pyreflies, the closeness of the dripping walls, the furtive scuttling of the claws of fiends that were audible all around but impossible to see through the gloom, filled her with unbearable dread.

She shook her head emphatically, starting to shake as horror rippled over her skin. Her heart had begun to thud dully against the inside of her ribs, and her stomach rolled over with a sick flop. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her trembling hands to her mouth, suddenly afraid she was going to lose the awful potion that had been so difficult to get down in the first place.

“All right. There, there,” said the nun, hastily coming to her side when she noticed the change in her expression. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Calm down.” With an intuition doubtless born of many years of attending sick children, she picked up the basin from the table and waited to see if it would be needed. But after a moment Lulu managed to steady herself, drawing in and letting out a deep and shuddery breath.

The nurse petted her comfortingly on the head, a gesture which Lulu found insultingly patronizing, but the touch of her hand tugged up a sudden hazy string of memories, like pulling up a weed and discovering a long and tangled underground vine attached to it. She of course hadn’t been alone all the time she had lain here. Someone had been with her, tending to her wounds, murmuring a few words of white magic over her, sponging cool water onto her fevered forehead, spooning a thin broth between her lips, soothing her when she had been unable to keep herself from crying out.

A flush of mortification prickled over her at the memory of being so helpless. She knew that the woman meant well, but she simply had no idea who she was or what she had been through, and how could she be expected to? To Bevelle, Lulu must have appeared just another child, a foundling orphan brought in to be taken under the care of the temple. The nun had no way of knowing that her wounds were battle-scars, that the plush doll now lying motionless beside her had once been not a toy but a tool used to channel powerful black magic, that she had not been lost when the summoner found her alone but at the end of a failed quest from which she had been the only survivor.

And Lulu could not tell her.Even if she could bring herself to confess, she did not think she would be able to make her understand.

“Why don’t you lie back down for a bit,” suggested the nurse, and Lulu did. She was already feeling worn out even though she had not been awake for very long, or even managed to get out of the bed. The nurse at last brought her the longed-for glass of water, then tucked her into bed with a practiced air. “You needn’t be afraid,” she said, her tone mellow and mollifying, “You can tell me anything you like, you know. Sister Betony is here to listen. Won’t you at least tell me your name?”

She would not. The nun sighed a little but left her alone then, and drew the curtains shut over the nearby window so she could sleep. Lulu turned over onto her side and drew her doll up under her chin, no longer caring how babyish she must have looked like that. She closed her eyes.

As she began to drift off again she silently sorted through the catalogue of things she could not let herself forget, turning them over one by one in her head and forcing herself to remember as she mentally packed them into a box she would never open for anyone. _My name is Lulu. I used to be a black mage. I was a guardian to a summoner on pilgrimage. I failed._

*

Two days later Sister Betony consented to allow her to leave the infirmary. She probably could have benefited from a few more days of rest; she still tired easily, and doing anything more strenuous than sitting up in bed was a laborious chore, but the wounds – on her body, at least – had healed and she wanted to leave. She was tired of being fussed over, she was tired of the constant well-intentioned presence of the nurse, she was tired of having her hair in disarray, she was tired of potions and salves, she was tired of the smell of the rice porridge Sister Betony had been bringing her for the last six meals, and she was tired of being treated as though she hadn’t done something awful.

Realizing she would doom herself to being addressed as “poor baby” and “little miss” forever if she did not, she had at last surrendered, in unsteady handwriting, her name and age, resulting in an unwelcome torrent of sympathetic cooing from the nurse when she learned that she was not quite thirteen. But she had not been able to muster the will to confide where she had come from, who she had been with, or what she had been doing in the Calm Lands. It would not have done any good, anyway. She knew she could not go back to her village. Even if the pass through the mountains was still navigable at this time of year, she did not feel she could ever call it home again with Lady Ginnem gone, and she could not bear the shame and sorrow of returning to the village without her.

It had therefore been decided, since there was nothing else to be done with her, that Lulu would begin to attend the temple school, with the far-off, dreary expectation of entering the clergy when she came of age. The prospect of having the rest of her life already planned out for her was like looking down a long, dim, narrow corridor, but she did not have the heart to offer much resistance. She deserved no better. She had had a chance to live the life she wanted, using her talents to serve the woman she had loved, and she had ruined it.

While she waited for Sister Betony, Lulu examined herself in a mirror behind a folding screen that had been set up as a dressing area in the corner of the infirmary. It had been something of a shock to see her own reflection for the first time since the morning her summoner party had left Macalania Temple a few weeks ago, heading north to the Calm Lands. The surprise wasn’t that she looked like a completely different person, after all she had been through, but that she still recognized herself, despite appearing so changed.

She looked older; the girlish rosiness had been all but washed from her cheeks, and her features were sharper, her expression harder, than they had been. The fine outlines of her jaw and cheekbones stood out in greater definition. Lifting the scalloped lace edge of her camisole, she inspected the faint, puckered lines of the scars tracing the shape of her ribs. She supposed she would have them forever, but they were not nearly as bad as the ones that had been left on her face.

Beneath the curtain of her hair, there was a set of parallel furrows carved from forehead to cheek, with a sharp, almost surgical precision. The ruby-hued iris of her left eye had been clouded over by a pearl-pale translucent film. No one’s white magic had been able to restore the vision to it taken by the ghostly claws of the fiend that had struck her. The sight of the blinded eye, staring dead and white as a shell from her own face, still made her shudder a little when she lifted her hair, but she found herself less concerned about it than she felt she should have been. By rights, she ought not to have been alive at all, and the missing eye in truth seemed somewhat trivial compared to everything else that had happened.

“Here you go, dear,” said Sister Betony cheerfully, returning, and Lulu let her hair fall back into place. “Let’s see if these fit.” She had brought with her a set of girls’ school clothes, consisting of a prim cream-colored blouse with long sleeves and a round collar, a pleated wool skirt in Bevelle-green, knee socks, and sensible-looking shoes. Lulu hated it immediately. “Oh, don’t make that face,” the nun reprimanded her lightly, “You want to fit in with all the other girls in your class, don’t you?”

Fitting in had never been a particular goal, or skill, of Lulu’s, but she had a feeling that her old clothes were probably damaged beyond repair even if she had been allowed to wear them. They had most likely been thrown out by now. At least Sister Betony had brought some hair ribbons, even if they were green.

The nurse helped her dress, clucking over Lulu’s bony shoulders and knobby elbows as she did. The overall effect, as it came together in the mirror, was not promising. The clothing fit poorly and seemed to hang from her with all the grace of hanging from a coatrack. The wool skirt was already becoming intolerably itchy where it touched her skin and it took a great deal of composure not to squirm. And green proved to be a frightful color on her, pushing her complexion from merely wan to outright sickly-looking. She was not going to be making a very good first impression on Bevelle.

Sister Betony, who seemed to disagree, told her she looked “very pretty” and then folded away the screen and went to change the sheets while Lulu began the lengthy process of braiding her hair, still slightly damp from a recent washing. As the long braids grew between her fingers, she began to feel a little more like herself, but not much.

“What are you doing here?” Sister Betony demanded suddenly, and the sudden change in her voice from the indulgent tone she had been speaking in before made Lulu startle. But the woman’s sharpness was directed at the infirmary doorway, where there lingered a very small shape, mostly hidden in the shadow from the hall. It was a little girl, hanging back with the uncertainty of a stray kitten. She looked about ready to flee, but the nun’s attention had pinned her to the spot.

“I don’t feel well,” she mumbled in a tiny voice, drawing back from the nurse’s scrutiny and all but disappearing behind the doorframe. From the corner where she was standing, Lulu could scarcely see her.

“You’ll feel a lot worse if Sister Meena catches you trying to get out of lessons again.” The nun crossed to the doorway and caught the shrinking child by the wrist, eliciting a squeak of protest as she dragged her up out of hiding. “Go on, shoo, you sneaky little heathen.” She sent her on her way with a slight shove, and Lulu could hear the unsteady patter of her footfalls fading off down the hall, in accompaniment to a muffled little sob.

“There, now.” She turned away from the door, wiping her hands on her apron as though to clean them of the thing she had just done. Lulu looked quickly back to the mirror, puzzled by the marked shift in her attitude. She would not have guessed the smiling, lenient nurse had it in her to be so unkind to a child. Perhaps it was true that that particular one had been known to shirk her lessons as she was accused, but the nun’s abrupt rejection of her seemed uncharacteristically severe. And why, of all the dismissive things she could have called her as she shunted her out the door, “heathen?”

She was mulling over the peculiar resonance of that word when Sister Betony returned to her and began tying one of the ribbons to the end of the braid she had finished. Lulu drew away uneasily, mistrustful of her after what she had just witnessed, but she could only go as far as the length of her hair permitted. Hurriedly, she tied off the other braid.

“There! All set?” asked Sister Betony, her creased and friendly countenance all smiles again. She cupped her face affectionately in her plump, warm hands, and for a moment Lulu was uncomfortably worried that she was going to kiss her on the cheek, but she did not.

The nun ushered her to the door with all the ceremony of a parent sending off a young child on the very first day of school, which made the unceremonious booting she had given the other child seem all the more surreal in contrast. “Don’t forget your little friend. Good luck with your lessons. You come back if you aren’t feeling well, all right? Take care, little miss.”

*

Yuna plodded along the hall with her head down. The fingers of one hand trailed along the carved and painted molding on the wall; the fingers of the other were in her mouth. Beneath the edge of her hair she watched the stone floor go by, unable to see much else through the blur of tears she was fighting to keep from falling. It wasn’t fair. Sister Betony in the infirmary wouldn’t believe her, but she did have a tummyache, she had had a tummyache for _days_ and nobody would listen to her. Nobody ever listened to her.

But she listened to them. And they were saying that Papa and Sir Jecht and Sir Auron had come back to Bevelle, on the night it had rained so hard. But that couldn’t be true because Papa had said goodbye, and he wasn’t ever coming back because he had gone away to defeat Sin. He was going to defeat Sin and become High Summoner and he wasn’t ever coming back.

But they were saying that he had come back, and that he had brought a girl with him that he had found in the wilderness, and that the girl was now in the infirmary because she had been hurt by a fiend. She wanted to see if it was true. But Sister Betony wouldn’t let her in, even though she did have a tummyache.

She had just wanted to see the girl. Even though the thought of her father paying attention to another little girl, when he had not even come to say goodbye to Yuna one more time, made her feel hot all over under her skin and her chest hurt with the effort of not crying, she wanted to see her. Because even if he had been here, he was already gone now. And that meant that the last person who had seen him had been the mysterious girl.

She wanted to talk to her, and ask if she had really seen him. She wanted to know how his pilgrimage was going, and if they had gone a very long way, and how long it would be, before he defeated Sin. She wanted to know if he and his guardians were having a good time. She wanted to know if he had mentioned her.

Yuna paused at the place where two hallways met, pulled up one of her sliding socks, and looked around the corner in each direction, wondering where to go. If she went on to the classroom, Sister Constance would be angry with her for being late and interrupting the lesson, but if she went back to the dormitory, Sister Meena would be much, much angrier if she caught her not at the lesson. She wished she knew somewhere she could hide. The deep, listening stillness of the long corridors made her feel like a small animal caught out in the open.

If only she were allowed into the infirmary. Then she could lie down for a little while and not be in anybody’s way and not worry about where she was supposed to be. And then she could talk to the girl and ask her if she had seen her father. She could ask if she had talked to him, and if she knew how his pilgrimage was going, and if he had said anything about his daughter and how much he loved and missed her. And she could ask what he had looked like, and what he had sounded like, and what he had been like. Because, deep in her heart, Yuna was a little afraid that she was starting to forget.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Chapter Three

The halls of the temple were a maze of dim and twisting passageways, very alike and none of them familiar to Lulu. It was only with some difficulty that she managed to follow the directions she had been given to find the girls’ dormitory. The walls were stone, and seemed very old, older even than the walls of the forgotten temple in the mountain village that had been her home. She supposed they had stood for a thousand years or more, maybe even since before the Machina War long ago.

Upon finding her way to the dormitory, she lingered in the doorway, feeling suddenly and unreasonably timid as she was approached briskly by a tall nun holding a broom. Her face, voice, and mannerisms all conveyed an angular kind of sharpness, and she addressed Lulu in clipped, quick sentences, as though talking to her was wasting her time.

“You must be the new orphan. Sister Betony told me you would be arriving. Lulu, was it? Is that your full name?”

Lulu nodded. The nun briefly arched one eyebrow as though in disbelief, then continued.

“Very well. I am Sister Meena. I’m told you don’t speak. Frankly, that won’t be a problem as long as you can follow instructions. There is a spare bed for you here, on the end.” She led her down a row of bunkbeds, of which there were many. The top bunk was made up somewhat clumsily, with one corner of the sheet hanging down, and occupied by a stuffed toy shoopuf. The lower bunk was bare. “You’ll find a trunk underneath to keep your belongings,” continued the nun. Her gaze lingered momentarily on Lulu’s moogle doll, carried as was its habit in the crook of her arm, with an expression of apparent distaste. “Toys are restricted to the dormitory and the playroom.”

Lulu was about to set the moogle down on the unmade lower bunk, but considered that since she was presently in the dormitory, there was no need. She responded by wrapping both arms around it and holding it tighter against herself. Sister Meena’s expression darkened fractionally, but she made no comment.

“We abide by a strict schedule here. Everyone else is at morning lessons, but Sister Constance doesn’t abide tardiness, so it won’t do to intrude on them now. You had better get on with your chores, in the meantime. We expect all children to contribute to the upkeep of the temple school and dormitories in some way. You can start by cleaning, unless you have some other useful skill, such as cooking, gardening, sewing –”

Lulu nodded hastily to stop her there, and spare herself a worse assignment. “Very well,” said Sister Meena, “you can take on the task of mending clothes. I will show you to the workroom.” She started for the door, then stopped with a stern and pointed glance towards Lulu’s moogle. “As I said, toys are to be kept in the dormitory.”

Reluctantly, Lulu laid her doll against the pillow of the lower bed. She had carried it with her for so long, first as a companion when she had been a child, then as a tool when she had been learning the art of magic, and finally, when she became a guardian, as a weapon. Her arms felt strange and useless without its familiar soft, warm weight. Defensively, she folded them against herself.

The nun led her to a small room where there was a worktable set up before the tall window that was customary of the temple. One wall was lined with shelves upon which were stacked bolts of fabric, most of them of the green, orange, and white of the habits of the Bevelle clergy, along with bundles of gold trim and little bins containing buttons and fasteners. Spools of thread and embroidery floss were arranged on rows of tiny pegs on the wall, and a wooden rod mounted beneath them held ribbons in reels of many colors. It was a not-unpleasant little room, well-organized and quiet, and Lulu thought it would be nice enough to work in, but as she took it in her gaze was quickly arrested by the sight of the contraption standing in one corner with a wooden stool pulled up in front of it, being operated by a novice nun.

It was built upon its own table, and there was a spool of thread on a spindle on top of it, with the thread running along the top and wound about an intricately weaving series of hooks over the side, down to a needle held in place by a metal arm. Attached on the other side was a wheel with a crank handle, which was turning as the needle moved up and down with a soft whir and clack. The novice, her back to them, was intently feeding the edge of a length of fabric beneath the bobbing needle. Judging by the needle and thread, Lulu supposed it was some kind of automatic stitcher, but she had never seen anything like it before. It was a very pretty thing, painted in glossy green enamel with embossing showing the brightly polished brass underneath in a dainty spiral pattern. But it was strange and discomfiting to see a machina in that holy place.

Sister Meena saw her staring, but offered no explanation. “Sister Kiku,” she said sharply, and the novice startled to attention. The machina abruptly ceased its humming as she jumped to her feet.

“Sister Meena! Forgive me, I didn’t hear you come in.” She quickly executed a little bow of apology.

“This is Lulu,” the superior nun replied, with only a slight nod of acknowledgement. She steered Lulu forward with a suddenly firm grip on her shoulder. “She’ll be assisting you with the mending and any other tasks you have for her.”

“Certainly. Thank you, Sister.” She looked distinctly relieved to see her go, and Lulu was glad to be free of the clamp of the thin, cold hand on her shoulder.

The novice fidgeted with her habit, seeming unconfident about being placed in charge of someone else. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kiku. Um . . . This is the sewing room, as you can probably see.” Wisps of her fair hair were sticking out from beneath the edge of her novitiate’s hood, which was slightly crooked. She was young, probably less than twenty, and Lulu remembered again that in a few years, she would be in her position. Hurriedly, she shoved the thought out of her mind and pointed to a basket that appeared to contain articles of clothing to be repaired, judging by the disarray with which they had been placed in it.

“Um, yes. You can start mending those.” She returned to her chair as Lulu collected scissors, needle, thread, and a torn blouse on her own, looking thankful to have a worker who was so self-sufficient. “You . . . don’t talk much, do you?” Lulu shook her head emphatically and sat down at a low bench before the worktable. The novice and the machina were to her left, so with her face in profile to her, she could no longer see her. She did not feel the need to begin a conversation just for the sake of talking.

“I . . . suppose that’s just as well,” said Kiku, sounding a little sad, but the character of her voice was lost beneath the industrious whir of the machina as she started it up again, and returned to her work.

 

After a few days she had more or less settled into the schedule of life in the orphanage. The children were roused early for morning prayers in the main temple with the nuns and monks, throughout which the littlest ones fidgeted. After that came the morning lessons devoted to study of the scriptures and the teachings of Yevon. For afternoon lessons they were divided into classes by age to be taught mathematics, grammar, literature, and Spiran history. None of it was particularly inspiring and even the history and literature classes, which could have been interesting, were given over to memorization of long lists of dates and the study of morality tales meant to improve the children’s character rather than to provoke thought. As Sister Meena had informed her, the schedule was tightly kept, and in class even slight infractions such as tardiness or talking out of turn were met with swift discipline by Sister Constance. But, as Lulu was prompt, a good student, and not inclined to speak anyway, she managed to get by without attracting unwanted attention from the nuns.

The other children, however, were another matter. The time between classes was given over to supervised recreation, provided chores were completed first, but Lulu found herself enjoying the workroom more than the playroom, and began devising ways to linger over her tasks. It was quiet, and usually the only other person around was the mild Sister Kiku, who understood that she did not speak. The other students were noticeably interested in her, and while none of them approached her she was aware of the rustling veil of whispers surrounding her whenever she entered a room, the glances that never met hers but flickered away on the edge of her vision, like ghosts. She knew that the suddenness of her arrival, the strangeness of her eyes, the striking contrast of her long, black hair against her moon-pale skin, her foreign mannerisms, her detachment, her sadness, her silence, all made her a curiosity in their eyes, and she did not enjoy being the subject of so many inquisitive gazes at once.

At the end of the day bedtime was strictly enforced, and early, regardless of age, so that at night she often lay awake for a long time after the lights had gone out, tired but not sleepy, with nothing to do except listen to the furtive sniffling of her young bunkmate as she cried herself to sleep. She wondered if she ought to have done something to comfort her, and if so, what. But she could never bring herself to say anything, and the most attention the woeful little thing ever got from any of the other children was a hiss of _Shut up!_ if her crying got too loud. Then she would make an effort to stifle the sound, so that once again only Lulu would be able to hear.

Some nights she drifted off early, only to wake disoriented after only a few hours, with an immeasurable stretch of darkness yet until dawn. Then she would lie wide-awake beneath the weight of the stillness, watching the faint and pallid moonlight edge across the stone floor in watery shapes through the heavy, old glass windows, listening to quiet creak of bedsprings, the mumbling and snoring of the other sleepers, the lonely sigh of the winter wind outside the windows, and feeling that she must have been the only person awake in the temple.

She still had nightmares. Some nights her sleep was flooded with howling ghost-lit darkness and the memory of her summoner, standing solemn and brave between her and something that was too terrible to look at. Once, she woke in a galloping-hearted sweat with a hoarse and broken cry of _“My Lady!”_ ripped from her throat before she could stop it, provoking gasps and snickers from the other girls, who had become used to not hearing any sound from the odd newcomer.

She was not happy, but she was not miserable, either, and she realized she was becoming used to the tedium of the routine. There was a security in it that she had not had since she left home. But underneath it all there was a sense of unease that lingered like a doubt, a vague feeling of not-quite-rightness that she could not define. She was afraid of allowing herself to be lulled into complacency by Bevelle.

*

Lulu’s morning so far was not going well. Sister Kiku, taking note of her skill at sewing, had offered to teach her to operate the automatic stitcher, but the fluttery novitiate in her nervousness had put her foot down on the treadle that set the machina in motion before Lulu was prepared for it and the needle had pierced her finger. As a result she had had to return to the infirmary to be fussed over once again by a doting Sister Betony. Afterwards, having gained a bandaged hand and a lecture about being more careful in the future and lost an hour of her day as well as a good bit of patience, she still had to finish the chores she had set out to do. This time, without the aid of the machina.

She was headed back up to the dormitory, hoping for some peace and quiet before she had to go to her afternoon classes, when she found the stairs blocked by another child, who was on her hands and knees scrubbing them. Lulu hesitated, wondering if she should try to find another way around or wait until she was finished. She was still not confident in her mental map of the temple other than the routes she usually traveled during the day, and did not want to risk the indignity of getting lost, but the stair-scrubber did not seem to be making much progress.

It was a narrow wooden back staircase, the treads bowed and worn visibly in the middle from the weight of many generations of students. Finishing her work on the current step, the little girl put down her brush and stood to pick up the bucket. It was clearly too heavy for her and it took both hands and most of her strength to hoist it up to the next step. Soapy water sloshed out onto her already-sodden jumper. Lulu noticed, although the child did not yet seem to, that she was going about it backwards. Once she climbed up one step, she had to turn around and redo the place where she had put her feet on the clean, wet previous one. This was evidently going to take some time.

For a moment Lulu stood watching her idly at a distance while she contemplated where to go. A small, deep-down, cruel part of her was secretly relieved to see that at least someone was having as bad a day as she was. She wondered if she should perhaps offer some advice, since the child was only halfway up the stairs, but she couldn’t think of anything more encouraging to say than, “You’re doing that wrong.”

Just then a pair of girls, a few years younger than herself but older than the girl on the steps, came clattering by in the direction Lulu had been headed. With a blithe disregard for the wet steps or the child toiling over them, they rushed up the staircase, brushing carelessly past the little girl with her brush and bucket. Whether it was by accident or design, Lulu never saw, but the heavy wooden bucket tipped, seesawed precariously for a second, and then tumbled inevitably down the stairs, its descent punctuated by an emphatic hollow thump on each one. Dirty water cascaded over the steps and flooded the landing with a filmy tide of suds. The now-empty bucket rolled in an erratic curve and finally came to a stop in front of Lulu’s feet. She righted it, rather pointlessly, since the damage had already been done.

“Oops,” sniggered the girl who had toppled the bucket, with affected sincerity, and then the two of them ran off amid an airy bubbling of giggles that lingered behind them in an echo, as though to taunt the unfortunate child further. Lulu expected her to burst into tears, but she did not. She merely gave a weary little sigh, as though she was unsurprised by what had happened, and somehow that was even sadder. Cautiously she made her way down the steps, now slippery and less navigable than ever, to where Lulu was standing holding the bucket.

She held it out to her, and the little girl took it without looking up at her. “I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. She had a delicate lisp that curled around the words of her apology so that it came out “ _I’m so sowwy_.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” replied Lulu, surprising herself. They were the first words she had spoken voluntarily to anyone in a long time.

Now that she could see the child up close, she realized she recognized her bunkmate, the sniffler, whom she had never taken particular notice of before. Apart from the morning scripture classes, where the youngest children sat near the front of the room, she had not shared any lessons with her and had rarely seen her apart from in the dormitory.

She was six or seven, with light brown hair bobbed close about her chin and in the process of losing its barrette. Her clothes, a bit too big on her, were soaked with water and one of her socks was falling down. She had a sweet round face, dimpled knees, and pudgy little limbs that suggested that she was, or had been until recently, someone’s darling.

“Please don’t tell Sister Meanie,” the little girl implored her in a babble, “I’ll clean it up, I promise.”

“I’m not going to tell on you,” said Lulu, realizing she was biting back a smile at the child’s mispronunciation of the stern dormitory keeper’s name, and wondered if it had been intentional.

The younger girl relaxed, but a moment later the metronomic rap of briskly approaching footsteps – adult footsteps – on the floor caused her to go rigid with visible terror, rooting her to the spot like an arctic hare whose ears had caught the sound of an approaching bashura. She dropped the bucket and looked desperately up at Lulu, who could see fear and resignation fighting for control of her easily-readable expression. Torn between the desire to flee and the obligation to take responsibility for what had happened, she was looking for a nudge of guidance in either direction.

Instead, without thinking, Lulu put out her unbandaged hand and the pool of water on the floor swirled up into itself, coalescing into a liquidly wobbling sphere, and then collapsed back into the bucket with a foamy splash. Not a moment later a nun arrived at the foot of the stairs to see what the ruckus had been about. It was not the dreaded Sister Meena, but that did not seem to much comfort the little girl, who drew back timidly against Lulu, thrusting the fingers of one hand, which had to have been soapy, into her mouth and taking hold of her skirt with the other.

The nun took in the scene with a scrutinizing glance but appeared to find nothing amiss. “Aren’t you finished with those stairs?” she demanded at last, for lack of anything else to say. The child nodded. “Then get this bucket out of here and go back to the common room. Stop dawdling around here.”

After she left the girl tilted her head up to Lulu in wonder. “You can use magic!”

Lulu was nearly as surprised as she was. “I . . . well, I could. I mean, I used to. But not for a while now.”

“But you just did.”

“It was just a fluke. I’m not a black mage anymore.”

“You’re a black mage?” The child’s eyes and mouth widened into matching circles. Her eyes were two different colors, Lulu noticed. At first she had taken them for blue, but the right one was green. She had never seen anyone with green eyes before.

“ _No_. Be more careful next time.” Mentally, she kicked herself for using the same words as Sister Betony, especially since they were just as unwarranted as they had been when directed at her.

“Okay.” She seemed unconvinced, but didn’t press the matter further. “I won’t tell anybody,” she said earnestly.

She began struggling to pick up the bucket again. Lulu took hold of the handle and helped her lift it, wondering how she had managed to get it halfway up the stairs by herself. “Thank you,” said the little girl, and then, as an afterthought, “I’m Yuna.”

“I’m Lulu.”

“Can I be your friend?”

Lulu tried hard to keep any lack of enthusiasm from registering in her expression. “I . . . don’t see why not.” The shy smile, bereft of one of its front teeth, that lit up Yuna’s face almost made up for all the nuisances Lulu had a feeling came attached to a friendship with a seven-year-old. At the time she did not know that her answer to that simple question would one day gain the strength to change the shape of the world. But years later, she would remember the gap-toothed little smile of a friendless child and know that it was worth it.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the shoopuf came from a hilariously-translated FFX bootleg dvd owned by AuronLu. You can see it [here](http://auronlu.hubpages.com/hub/fansub); I guarantee you will not be disappointed. :)

 

Chapter Four

The isolation cell was a tiny, closet-like space barely wider than its door, nearly dark except for a small lantern set into a bracket high on the wall so that its light fell only on the Yevon script of the scroll hanging beneath it. Children sent to the cell as punishment were meant to kneel quietly and pray, contemplate the scriptures, and think about their misdeeds, but at the moment all Yuna could think about was how unfairly she was being treated. For some reason, the nuns never seemed to catch anyone who started fights, but they certainly caught her if she fought back.

She felt as though she had been in time-out forever, and her knees ached from kneeling. Every so often someone came by and rapped sharply on the door to make sure she wasn’t fidgeting, but did not open it. She had said she was sorry, but it hadn’t seemed to have done any good. She had prayed, and read as much of the scripture that she could understand, but nothing had helped. Perhaps it was because she was a heathen like the nuns said. Perhaps she was simply beyond redemption.

To pass the time, she started going over the list she kept in her head of all the things she had wanted to say to Lulu. She did this all the time, but so far she had not been able to bring herself to say any of them. She had waited for so long to get a chance to meet her, and to talk to her, and to ask her all the questions she had had about when she had seen her father, but now that she had met her she found herself too shy to say anything to her. It was true that the older girl rarely spoke to anyone else, either, so it wasn’t only Yuna who had trouble striking up a conversation with her. She dearly wanted to be loved by Lulu, who was so smart and so beautiful and so _sad_ , but she didn’t know how to reach her. So far their friendship had mainly consisted of Yuna being happy that she had someone to consider a friend nearby. It was less lonely at night knowing she was only as far away as the bottom bunk of their bed.

After a time she heard the stony echo of footsteps approaching the door and braced herself, but the footfalls were much softer and less brisk than those of a nun. They stopped outside the door, and there came a quiet, stealthy knock.

“Yuna? Is that you in there?”

“Lulu?”

There was a rustly hush of clothing sliding down against the door, and then the thin crack of light beneath disappeared as she sat down on the other side of it. Yuna scooted over and leaned against her side of the door, glad for her nearness.

“You’ve been gone a long time. I heard the commotion and I had a feeling it might have had to do with you. What happened?”

“They took Herbert.”

“Who is Herbert?”

Yuna swallowed hard against the sting of tears in her throat. “My shoopuf.”

“They took your shoopuf?”

Yuna nodded, and then remembered that Lulu couldn’t see her. She started explaining in a trembly rush, fighting to keep her voice from rising too loud. “I was playing with him . . . and then another girl came up and said that she wanted a turn, and I didn’t want to give him to her, b-but she told on me to Sister Meanie and she said that I needed to share, and I tried to tell her that he was _mine_ , but she didn’t listen and she said I was very bad for not sharing and . . . and _they took him_.” She stopped talking and took in a deep breath that tripped a little over the sob she was holding in. Lulu’s fingers appeared beneath the doorframe, reaching for hers. Finding Yuna’s hand, she laced their fingers together.

“Don’t cry,” the older girl said softly. It sounded more like advice than reassurance. Yuna tried her hardest to follow it.

She caught her breath sharply as the clack of a nun’s shoes sounded near Lulu on the other side of the door. “You,” said a voice, not Sister Meena’s, but Yuna flinched anyway in anticipation, “What are you doing there?”

“I was sent to the cell,” Lulu replied glibly, “I’m waiting my turn.”

“I see,” said the nun, taken aback by her apparent integrity, “Well, you’re going to have to wait a while longer. That little troublemaker in there still has fifteen minutes to go.”

When she had gone, Yuna sighed and shifted her legs a little. Her feet were starting to feel prickly. “Lulu?” she asked after a while.

“Hm?”

“What’s a heathen?”

There was a brief silence on the other side of the door. “It’s . . . someone who doesn’t believe in the teachings of Yevon.”

“Oh.” Yuna frowned. That made no sense at all. She had always believed in the teachings, and done her best to follow them. Her father had been a priest of this very temple before she was born. He had even named her after one of Yevon’s great holy figures, although her mother had insisted she was really named after a flower. She couldn’t understand why the nuns called her such a thing.

Lulu stayed with her, talking to her quietly from the other side of the door until the fifteen minutes were up. When the nun returned to unlock the door and let Yuna out, she obediently took her place inside the cell. Yuna wondered what Lulu could possibly have done to deserve a time-out. Ordinarily she was a model of good behavior and never caused any trouble with the nuns. As the door shut it occurred to her suddenly that perhaps Lulu wasn’t in trouble at all, and that she had _lied_ to the Sister to stay and keep her company.

Yuna felt terrible. She wanted to speak up on her behalf, but lying was a sin, and she didn’t want to risk getting Lulu in real trouble. She put her hand on the door and imagined Lulu’s hand on the other side, as though they could almost touch each other, but the nun turned an iron key in the lock with an emphatic clunk and took Yuna by the wrist.

“Come on,” she said shortly.

“Thank you,” Yuna whispered, as she was towed away from the door, but there was no response.

*

That night while Lulu lay awake, engaged in her customary battle with insomnia, she could hear Yuna turning over restlessly in the bunk above. Apparently she couldn’t sleep, either. After a while she felt the metal supports of the bed list slightly to one side and heard her slide down to the floor. She listened to the barely-audible sound of her little feet crossing the room and disappearing with a faint creak through the dormitory door. She supposed she had gone to visit the lavatory, which was in principle not allowed, as the children were forbidden from leaving the dormitory after bedtime, but Yuna was only seven.

Unable to sleep, Lulu rolled over onto her back and sat her moogle up on top of the blanket. It could still sit up on its own, although that was due to the shape of its stuffing and its button-jointed limbs rather than the lingering magical anima it had once possessed. Idly she clapped its paws together and tapped its pompom to make it bounce. Its head lolled forward lifelessly. Lulu sighed. It had once seemed almost like a tiny creature with a soul of its own, but the spark of magic she had put into it when she was just a little girl, lonely for a friend, was gone now. She had not tried to use magic again since the day she had rescued Yuna’s overturned bucket. She had thought about it, but every time she did she was reminded of how it had failed her in the cave, how she had not been strong enough to save her summoner, and the arcane energy lapped back into herself like a retreating wave before it could reach her hands. It was always there, tingling like a faint headache, but she couldn’t bring herself to transfer it into a spell. When she hugged her doll to herself, it could no longer hug her back, as she had once been able to will it to do.

Some time had passed, and Yuna had not returned. Lulu wondered if she was ill, or had gotten lost. She realized she felt somewhat responsible for her and was surprised that she cared, but she had a nagging feeling that if she didn’t care about her, there was no one else who would. Quietly she got out of bed and ventured into the hall.

The moonlight through the tall temple windows was only barely bright enough to see by, and she made her way along the shadowed side of the hall, hoping to avoid any possible nuns on their way to late-night devotions. She checked the bathroom but found it empty, and wondered where else Yuna could have gone. Surely she couldn’t have gone far, but in the dark the temple seemed more vast, and ancient, and labyrinthine than ever, and Lulu had no idea where to start looking for her. It did not help that losing sight in one of her eyes had affected her perception of depth. She tried not to think about the dozen nameless nocturnal sounds echoing from the cold stone walls, or how the darkness of the narrow corridor pressed in on her so like the darkness of tunnels. Folding her arms close against herself, she gripped her elbows and wished she had brought along her doll, even if it was useless.

The soft, sibilant shuffling of footsteps upon the bare floor whispered to her from further up the corridor. Lulu caught her breath, and then a tiny figure in pink pajamas came into view around a corner. She let it out again. Yuna flew to her and flung her arms around her tightly, hiding her face against the front of her nightgown. Hesitantly Lulu returned the sudden embrace, for the child was trembling from fear or cold or excitement.

“It’s all right,” she said awkwardly.

“I thought maybe you were one of the nuns.”

“No, it’s just me. I came looking for you. What are you doing out here?”

Yuna let her go and, somewhat abashedly, held up a light blue stuffed shoopuf. “I had to get him back,” she explained in a frantic whisper, “They left him in the playroom. They don’t care about him. Please don’t tell. You’re not angry, are you?”

“Of course not. Come on, before we get caught.” She took the little girl’s hand and headed back for the dormitory.

“He really is mine, you know,” Yuna explained of Herbert, whom was clutching firmly to herself with her free arm.

“I believe you.”

“My papa gave him to me . . . before he left.”

“Before he . . . left?” It had not occurred to her that Yuna might still have living parents. Of course, there was always the possibility that she had been told, like so many orphans, that her father had simply “gone away,” leaving the cruel hope that he might return someday. “Where did he go?” she asked, hoping that the answer would not be “the Farplane.”

“He’s a summoner,” Yuna replied quietly, “He went to defeat Sin.”

“I see,” said Lulu, regretting that she had asked. If Yuna wasn’t an orphan yet, she was as good as one. Unless her father surrendered his pilgrimage, she would probably never see him again. Either he would die defeating Sin or die somehow else in the attempt; that was the fate of summoners. She wondered how a father could have knowingly abandoned his child, even for the chance to bring the Calm.

She was reminded briefly of the summoner who had saved her in the Calm Lands, whom she had not gotten the chance to thank, or even to learn his name. Surely it couldn’t have possibly been the same summoner, but perhaps their paths had crossed along the pilgrimage route. She would likely never see him or his guardians again, either. The thought made her unbearably sad.

“Lulu? What’s wrong?” Yuna tugged on her hand, looking up at her in concern. She was on her right, and Lulu realized her pained expression must have been readable in the moonlight. She made an effort to set her face back into a more neutral shape.

“It’s nothing. Come on.”

In the safety of their bunkbed she lay listening to Yuna fall asleep overhead, the sound of her breathing and the shifting of the mattress gradually slowing. As she began to drift off herself she combed through the tangled skein of memories she had of the summoner, searching for his name. She had barely been able to speak then, and the entire episode had a lingering foggy cast to it like a barely-remembered but still-dreaded nightmare, but she was sure she must have heard one of his two guardians address him at some point.

She had not thought about him in a long time, having not wanted to remember that awful day and forcibly shoving any recollection of it from her mind as soon as it arose. But now, nearly dreaming, she was swept away into a rushing flood of memory.

_“Hush, it’s all right, you’re safe now.”_

She could remember the concern on his face as he bent down to her, steadying her with his warm hands on her cold shoulders as she staggered. His eyes were blue, and clear, and worried. She remembered his kindness, the touch of his healing hand on her forehead as he tried to mend her wounds, the gentleness of his voice.

_“What is your name, dear heart?”_

She did not think she had been able to answer him, but she wished she could recall if he had given her his, or if she had heard it spoken. He had had two guardians, a strangely-dressed man with a breezy, unfamiliar manner of speech, and a gruff, dour warrior who had had little to say to her, but who had offered her his coat. They had gone into the cave to see if any of her companions were left alive, but in the end, she was the only one.

She could remember the silk panels of the summoner’s robe against her cheek as he had let her rest her head on his knees, muddied and bloodied as she was, while they waited for them to return. She remembered the soft and peaceful balm of white magic taking the edge from the pain, his voice speaking to her comfortingly, although the words were no longer distinct. She could picture him as someone’s father, and she wished she knew who he was.

On the edge of sleep, it came to her, in the dimly-recalled voice of one of his guardians. _Lord Braska_.

*

Little by little, she began to call magic back to her hands. At first she did it in an effort to make sure that Yuna no longer had to scrub the stairs or lug around heavy buckets of water. After morning lessons she would meet her by the stairs on the way to her tasks in the sewing room, and then, while Yuna stood guard to make sure no one was coming, she would practice lifting the water into the air like a wobbly raincloud, and wash the steps with it. Yuna liked to watch the water cascading down the steps in sudsy cataracts and swooping back into the bucket.

Afterwards, she would smuggle her into the sewing room, which was almost never visited by anyone other than herself and Sister Kiku, whom she felt was too timid to tattle to one of the nuns about Yuna’s whereabouts. She would sit under the worktable, behind a length of fabric draped over the edge of the table to hide her, playing with empty spools and bits of ribbon or napping with her head on a bolt of cloth while Lulu sewed. Yuna was good at keeping quiet; the desire not to draw attention to herself seemed to come to her almost instinctively.

Lulu was surprised at how much she enjoyed having her around. They rarely spoke to each other, even in their free time, for Yuna was shy and Lulu did not enjoy conversation, but there was an easy peace between them in the silences, a quiet comfort in each other’s presence that neither of them shared with anyone else in Bevelle.

Spring arrived, tentatively, and when it was warm enough the two of them explored outside to escape the enforced companionship of their classmates. There was a little ornamental garden on the temple grounds that they liked to visit, because, being ostensibly intended for prayer and reflection, it was usually free of other children. At first Yuna was worried that they weren’t allowed to be there, but Lulu reasoned that anyone was unlikely to be forbidden from praying in a place that encouraged piety so insistently as the Temple of Bevelle.

Bevelle’s winters were milder than those Lulu was used to, so the garden had survived throughout the cold season with occasional tending. There was an arched bridge over a little stream trickling through a bed of pebbles, a few slender red Wilderia maple trees, and some hardier flowers in neat beds. A path of round, flat stones, each bearing the Yevon inscription for one of the temples, led to a central area where the insignia for Yevon itself was engraved large upon the ground. Surrounding this were statues of three of the four High Summoners, Lord Gandof, Lord Ohalland, and Lady Yocun. The first High Summoner, Lady Yunalesca, rarely appeared in statuary outside of the temples, and was not often invoked in prayer. Lulu sometimes wondered why Yevon did not encourage supplication to her the way it did to the later three. Perhaps she was simply too holy a figure to be bothered by petty requests from the faithful. She could not imagine someone coming to the grand statues of the Lady and her husband inside the temple and saying, “Lady Yunalesca, Lord Zaon, our great saviors who first delivered us from Sin, bringers of the Calm . . . please help me not to fail my history test.”

The day was warm, with only a slight echo of the passing winter in the chill of the breeze when it blew. Yuna hopped ahead on the path of paving stones, reciting the names of the temples as she touched their symbols. “Besaid . . . Kilika . . . Djose . . . Macalania . . . Bevelle.” She moved through the shifting pattern of tree shade like a forest spirit in her green dress, in and out of patches of sunlight that brought out soft ribbons of gold in her light brown hair. Lulu followed her, descending the arch of the bridge as carefully as she could without letting on how precarious the slope seemed to her.

Yuna bowed obediently to each of the statues as she would to a superior, cupping her little hands before herself in the reverent Yevon manner as she had been taught, and then selected one and knelt before it. It was Lord Ohalland today, but she liked to pay attention to each of them in turn, so none of them would feel left out. Lulu had to smile at the notion of the Farplane-dwelling High Summoners feeling slighted by a seven-year-old, but Yuna was so earnest in her prayers that she couldn’t laugh at her.

“Lord Ohalland,” she began, managing the summoner’s name as best she could, “Please guide my papa on his pilgrimage and help him to defeat Sin and bring us the Calm. Thank you. From Yuna,” she finished, as though closing a letter, then bowed a little deeper and got to her feet. She looked up at Lulu, waiting to see if she wanted to take her turn, but the older girl rarely prayed outside of the communal prayers that all of the orphans made together. None of her prayers had ever been answered, and even if she did have something to ask for, she did not feel she deserved to ask for it.

Instead she sat down on a carved stone bench while Yuna played in the garden. She collected late-fallen leaves from the maple trees and then sat near Lulu’s feet as she did while she was sewing and began braiding their stems together.

“How pretty,” commented Lulu, as a chain of feathery leaves began to emerge from between her small diligent fingers.

Yuna held up her handiwork for her approval. “They match your eyes,” she said shyly, observing the deep red color of the leaves. “Why are your eyes red, Lulu?” she asked as she resumed braiding.

“They just are. I suppose one of my parents had red eyes too. It’s not uncommon where I’m from.”

“Don’t you remember your parents?”

“Not very well. They died when I was younger than you.”

“Sin?” Yuna asked quietly. Lulu nodded once. “I’m sorry.”

“What about _you_?” Lulu countered casually, to deflect the conversation away from herself, “Why are your eyes two different colors?”

“My mama was Al Bhed,” Yuna replied simply, “So her eyes were green.”

“Oh.” It then occurred to Lulu, in a moment of sudden clarity, why she was bullied by the other children and afraid of the nuns, why she seemed to have so few friends, why she had been asking what a heathen was. “That was you, that Sister Betony sent away from the infirmary that day, wasn’t it?” she realized, half to herself, because Yuna probably didn’t know that she had been there too, but the child nodded dismally, as though she understood.

She twisted around and looked up at Lulu with big, worried eyes. “You’re not . . . mad, are you? Will you still be my friend?”

Lulu felt her heart tighten. “Of course I will.” Yuna let out a sigh of relief that seemed to come from the very depths of her soul and leaned her forehead against the side of Lulu’s knee. “Come here.” She patted the bench and the younger girl clambered up next to her. “I’m not mad at you. You’re the only thing I like about this place. I was just curious.”

“You’re the only thing I like, too.”

“I don’t know much about the Al Bhed,” confessed Lulu, “I’ve never met any except the trading caravans that came to my village from time to time.”

“Me neither,” said Yuna, swinging her feet idly, “except for my mama, and she died when I was four. But everyone here still says I’m a . . . a heathen.”

“But your father is a summoner,” remembered Lulu, as though that should have helped matters.

Yuna nodded. “They call him the heretic summoner. He wanted to be friends with the Al Bhed. That’s how he met my mama.”

Lulu was a little surprised that a summoner married to a non-Yevonite had even been allowed to undertake the pilgrimage. The Al Bhed were forbidden even from entering the temples; she supposed that Yuna’s father’s position as a summoner was the only thing allowing her to remain here.

“Lulu?” began Yuna, and she knew what her question was going to be even before she asked it, “What’s a heretic?”

“It’s . . . someone who goes against Yevon.”

“Oh.” She was quiet a moment. “But what if he defeats Sin? Do you think maybe, if he defeats Sin . . . do you think maybe people will stop calling him that? Because then he wouldn’t be going against Yevon.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It would certainly be . . . ironic, if he did.” She realized Yuna would probably want to know what “ironic” meant, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

“Do you think my papa will become High Summoner? Will he have a statue too?” She pointed to a place beneath the maple trees, imagining it there.

“I think it’s possible,” said Lulu, but as soon as the words had left her mouth she thought she had been too quick with them, because in order to become High Summoner, Yuna’s father would have to die.

A cloud passed briefly over the sun, and in the absence of sunlight the warmth of early spring went out of the air. Yuna scootched a little closer, leaning into Lulu’s shoulder, and put her fingers in her mouth.

“What’s your father’s name?” Lulu asked at length.

“Braska,” replied Yuna, around her fingers. It came out sounding like “Bwaska,” and she had to have her repeat it just to make sure she had heard correctly.

“Does he have two guardians? A man in a red coat and another one with a – strange accent?”

“Sir Auron and Sir Jecht.”

Lulu touched her forehead in disbelief. “I . . . think I’ve met him.”

Yuna nodded, apparently unfazed by the coincidence. “I know.” She slid from the bench. “It’s cold out here. Could we go back inside?”

Before they left the garden, she retrieved her garland of maple leaves and laid it like an offering at the feet of Lord Ohalland. “Just a moment,” said Lulu, as Yuna turned back in the direction of the temple. She knelt in the cool grass before the statue and made a solemn Yevon bow, giving up the first heartfelt prayer she had said since Lady Ginnem had died.

*

It was only two days later that it happened. Word spread through the temple like a tidal wave that at last something was happening out on the Calm Lands. On that ancient theater stage scarred and broken by battles of centuries past, a summoner was in combat with Sin.

Everyone gathered on the Highbridge to watch, although even from that high vantage point it was hard to tell what was going on. Far away across the fields they could see the distant, familiarly ominous shape descended low on the sunset-streaked horizon like an approaching stormcloud. There were intermittent flashes of light, and a far-off, rolling, thundery sound, and something else, some kind of monstrous beast too far away to see distinctly. But to be even visible as far as Bevelle, it had to have been a titan.

“The Final Aeon,” a murmur rippled through the crowd in awe. Such a thing had not been seen in living memory.

“I can’t see,” cried Yuna plaintively, tugging on Lulu’s skirt.

“Neither can I,” replied Lulu, standing on her toes in an effort to see through the line of onlookers, “I don’t think there’s much _to_ see.” But Yuna looked so distraught that she let her climb on to her back to try and get a better look. “Can you see anything?”

“I see Sin!” Yuna squeaked, in a high, breathy half-whisper that was almost lost in the clamor of excited voices around them. “But I can’t see anything else!”

“Hold still, I’m not a chocobo,” panted Lulu as Yuna tried to climb up onto her shoulders, for she was not as strong as she tried to make people believe, and the little girl was surprisingly solid. “I don’t want to drop you.”

“I can’t see,” wailed Yuna in desperation.

Her efforts proved in vain, anyway, as all of the children were soon shepherded back to the dormitories by an uncharacteristically flustered Sister Meena and sent to bed early as all of the monks and nuns gathered in the temple to pray. Instead of sleeping, the girls in the dormitory clustered together in flighty, chattering flocks, whispering impatiently to each other as though the goings-on were a secret too great to keep.

Poor little Yuna was practically delirious with anxiety and excitement. She trembled head to foot, bedsheet-pale except for two bright spots of color burning high on her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and shining as though she had a fever. “It’s my papa, I know it is,” she kept repeating, over and over in a breathless and tremulous whisper, and Lulu was inclined to believe her.

Trying to preserve some modicum of calm, for both of them, she helped her into her pajamas and brushed her hair, but Yuna wouldn’t go to bed. Once the other girls remembered that she might have some extra insight on the situation she became an object of interest. They crowded around the lower bed where she was sitting with her shoopuf in her arms, children who had teased and shunned her suddenly eager for her attention, Yevonites who had sneered and gossiped about her infamous father suddenly grasping at the promise of a potential hero. It was too much for Yuna who, overwhelmed by the bigness of it all, buried her face in Lulu’s neck and could not speak to anybody. Begrudgingly, they left her alone, with a few envious parting glances at Lulu for being clung to by the child who might, this very night, be the High Summoner’s daughter.

The distant, sonorous rumbling of the great battle went on late into the night, echoing like a ceaseless thunderstorm. In the absence of news, the girls in the dormitory went to sleep one by one and the chatter at last subsided. Lulu did not protest when Yuna slipped down from her own bed and snuggled in beside her for comfort, even though the bed was barely wide enough for both of them. Neither of them slept very much, lying silent but awake with their arms around each other, listening to the darkness. Eventually Yuna slid into a fitful, twitching doze, with her head on Lulu’s shoulder and one of her hands clutched tightly around a fistful of her nightgown.

Lulu settled her cheek against the top of her head and closed her eyes. _Please, Lord Braska,_ she thought as sleep overtook her at last, _You have to succeed where my summoner failed. It has to be you._

*

By the next morning the battle was over, but it would be some time before anyone knew for sure the outcome. Couriers had been dispatched on chocobos to find out what had happened, and the next two days were spent in an agony of anticipation as everyone awaited their return. Rumors flew back and forth among the students like bees; Sin was dead, Sin was still alive, Lord Braska had defeated it, Lord Braska had been defeated. The nuns, short-tempered from apprehension, came down on them with sharper discipline than ever, but even then it was near impossible for them to keep order in the classrooms.

Yuna, wide-eyed and exhausted from waiting, took in everything that was being said without a word in response. For two days she was scarcely able to eat or sleep, but for once the nuns withheld their scolding when she left food on her plate at mealtimes and was distracted and inattentive in class. None of them wanted to be the one to upset the High Summoner’s precious daughter, should that be the result. Yuna hardly seemed to notice the change. She drifted aimlessly after Lulu, white and silent as a ghost child, not speaking to anyone else. In the garden she piled leaves and flowers and prayers upon the statues of the High Summoners, and waited.

At last they were summoned all together into the main chamber of the temple to hear what news the couriers had brought. The usual organization of class and rank was done away with in order to fit everyone inside; priests, nuns, warrior monks, novitiates, groundskeepers, girls, and boys were all crowded together in an expectant jumble. Lulu had her arm around Yuna to prevent her from getting lost or knocked down. On her other side was Sister Meena, tapping one foot agitatedly against the floor next to a young warrior monk fidgeting with his gauntlets. In front of them, a boy and a girl from Yuna’s class were holding hands in excitement.

A tangible hush fell over the assembly as Grand Maester Mika himself appeared on the balcony overhead. He raised his withered hands for quiet, although no one was now making any noise, and addressed them all in his ancient, wavery tenor.

“People of Bevelle. As you may know, two days past, Summoner Braska met and challenged Sin upon the high plains of the Calm Lands.” Lulu felt Yuna draw in her breath sharply at the mention of her father’s name, and squeezed her lightly for reassurance. “It is the first time in our lifetimes that a summoner has had the strength and the will to combat Sin. Lord Braska, I am sure, fought valiantly . . .” There descended a tense and dreadful silence upon the room, broken only by the voice of one blithely unaware sparrow somewhere out in the gardens. “But it is with great regret that I report that he was defeated. Sin endures.”

The sound that followed was less an outcry of horror and dismay than one long disappointed sigh. People shuffled glumly for the doors, sniffled, looked at the floor, put their arms around one another in solidarity.

“Well,” said Sister Meena, “That’s that.”

Yuna fainted.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

Chapter Five

Early in the morning Yuna sat drooping at the table, staring dolefully at her breakfast and wishing it had not been given to her. She didn’t feel like eating. If she had a pet, like a dog, maybe she could stealthily share it while Sister Meena wasn’t looking. Or an aeon, she thought wistfully. But if she had an aeon, that would mean she was a summoner, and she wouldn’t be stuck here. They would be far away on the pilgrimage, her and the aeons and Lulu. Lulu wouldn’t have to become a nun and cut off all her beautiful hair. They could travel all across Spira together, and see all of the places she had only been able to imagine and meet the aeons her father had told her about, the mysterious dragon boy from Bevelle, the gentle bird girl from Besaid, the beautiful ice dancer from Macalania. She could see them all for herself and come to know them as friends. She wouldn’t ever be lonely again.

Things had not improved for Yuna in the few days since her father’s battle with Sin. In fact, they had gotten worse. At first she worried that she might be turned out of the temple altogether, but although she was permitted to stay, the nuns made no effort to hide from her that she was a charity case, and that they were obligated to care for her only out of the benevolence of Yevon. What little protection she had been offered by her father’s standing as a summoner, even an unfavored one, was gone. Teachers scolded more sharply than before, and children took their example and taunted her with more than usual nastiness.

Once the first clouds of melancholy had passed over, the people in the temple were beginning to look for a target to take their disappointment out on, and Yuna was within easy range. Even though they were no worse off than before, it seemed that people were taking his failure personally, as though her father had taken the Calm away from them instead of trying to bring it to them. She overheard them saying things like _of course_ he hadn’t been able to defeat Sin. He was a heretic. He had defied the teachings, and in the end was made to pay for his transgressions. It was an object lesson for everyone.

Yuna halfheartedly stirred the cooling bowl of rice in front of her, but it did not appear to diminish. She knew it was rude and ungrateful to leave it there, and she would be in trouble once Sister Meena circled the table and discovered her dawdling, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat it. A vague, queasy sort of nervousness was knotted up inside her tummy, as though the day of an event she had been dreading had arrived, but she didn’t know why. She wished she could go back to bed.

The morning meal in the orphanage was almost always rice, usually plain, with not even salt to go on it. Once a week, there was an egg beaten into it, which was supposed to be a treat, but Yuna couldn’t bear the slitheriness of the raw egg and had come to dread egg day. At home her father would have prepared it differently. It would have had a nicer texture and tasted better and they would have had soup too. And there would be fresh peaches, maybe, or plums, and sometimes he let her drink tea with him, which made her feel very grown up.

It had taken two days for the chocobo riders to come back from the battle plains with the news about Sin, and it had been three days since then. But a chocobo traveled faster than somebody walking on foot. She wondered how much faster. She had heard the Calm Lands were very big.

She knew her father had gone away, and she knew he wasn’t coming back because he had gone to defeat Sin. But he hadn’t defeated Sin. So maybe, just maybe, that meant that he might still come back. She had not said anything about it, holding the little hope close to her like something fragile cupped carefully in her hands, afraid that if she told someone it might be broken. They might tell her that it wasn’t true, and that Papa wasn’t ever coming back, because . . .

“Yuna!” Sister Meena’s voice came down on her like the swipe of the whippy wooden rod she used to discipline naughty children, giving Yuna such a fright that her chopsticks flew out of her hand and clattered on the table. “Haven’t you finished yet? Everyone is waiting for you.”

Yuna glanced down the length of the table, trying not to meet anyone’s gaze, and saw that the other bowls were empty and the other children were starting to fidget. A muffled snickering rippled down the line and she quickly looked down, feeling her face beginning to burn. “I-I’ve had enough, thank you,” she said quietly, as politely as she could.

“We are grateful for what we are given,” the nun reminded her sternly.

“I’m sorry. I am very grateful,” she replied, even more quietly.

“We shall wait for you to finish. Your delay is very rude to your classmates. You know Sister Constance does not abide tardiness.”

Yuna hung her head. If she made the class late, she would have to be the one to explain to Sister Constance that it was all her fault, and everyone would be mad at her for being such a nuisance. Fleetingly, she wished Lulu were there. But she was thirteen now, and with a new class of older students. There was no one here to protect her. She didn’t know what even Lulu could have done, anyway, and the thought filled her with a sense of defeat.

She looked at the eggy rice, now cold and more slippery-looking than ever. And there was so much of it. Her throat trembled a little and she swallowed hard, feeling her tummy start to churn even though there was nothing in it but knots. She knew there must be whispers about her being passed around the table, but all she could hear was the thump of her own pulse in her hot ears. They would be speculating on whether or not she would cry. She didn’t want to let them see her cry. Very uncomfortably, beneath the pin-pricking gaze of every pair of eyes at the table, she picked up the bowl and began to eat.

*

Morning lessons always seemed interminably long to Lulu, who counted the minutes until she could be back in the quiet sewing room. Her new class was made up of students aged thirteen through seventeen, and she had progressed from the back row of Sister Constance’s class with the oldest students to the front row of Sister Lavinia’s, among the youngest. Positioned directly in front of the instructor, her new seat was a very dangerous place to let her mind wander, as the nun had a sharp eye for inattentiveness.

She missed Yuna, and found herself worrying about her when they were apart, especially now, with the change in emotional climate around the temple Lord Braska’s defeat had triggered. Lulu had tried to make things a little easier for her when she could. She still helped her wash the steps, and in the evenings sometimes, after Sister Meena had turned out the lights and shut the dormitory door, she climbed up to the top bunk to talk with her quietly for a little while before she went to sleep.

Yuna enjoyed the bedtime stories she told, even the ones she made up on the spot. She especially delighted in the ongoing tale of a moogle named Mogdalena who could not fly, but rode everywhere on a tiny, winged shoopuf with whom she went on a series of increasingly-improbable adventures. Yuna would listen enraptured as Lulu leaned in close so that the other girls wouldn’t hear, fidgeting the tail of one of her braids around her little fingers, and for a time their world would close in softly to encompass only each other, and no one else.

But during the day, she could no longer be there to shield her from the other students at recess, or from the nuns during classes. Yuna rarely complained about it, but Lulu worried she was absorbing more passive abuse than she could see happening herself. Despite her insistence to the contrary, the little girl seemed to believe that she somehow deserved all of the ill will directed at her, and was patiently accepting it without fighting back. It hurt to see her looking so downcast, and even more to see her face light up not just with joy, but with relief when she caught sight of her. She hated to think of what would become of her when she wasn’t around.

And that day would come, soon enough. At seventeen, Lulu would be expected to decide whether to become a novitiate nun or a warrior monk in training, and be cloistered off into a new life and a new area of the temple from which she might never see Yuna again. Four years seemed like a long time, but she knew that it wasn’t, really. After all, she could remember being nine with perfect clarity, and that was only four years ago. It was the age she had been when Lady Ginnem had begun to train her in black magic, kindling the spark of talent she had been hiding from herself.

She tried to imagine what would have become of her had the summoner never taken her under her wing, and knew she could not abandon Yuna. But the only solution she could think of was to run away from Bevelle somehow, and that seemed too vague and intimidating a goal to be possible. Where would they go? How would they get there? How would they even escape the temple?

Before she could be caught daydreaming, a tiny, timid knock at the door intruded upon her thoughts, and upon Sister Lavinia’s lecture. At first Lulu thought she might have been the only one who heard it, but the nun turned away from the blackboard, surprised at the interruption.

“Yes?” she called, but, receiving no response, set down her chalk and crossed to open the door. “Yes, what is it?”

The reply was nearly inaudible, but Lulu was sure she heard her name, rolled over by a familiar lisp, and straightened up at her desk.

“Did Sister Constance send you? Very well. Lulu,” Sister Lavinia singled her out with a gesture of her hand inside her habit sleeve, “You are excused. There’s a student here with a message for you.”

Outside the door she found no message, only a pale and distressed-looking Yuna waiting for her with anxious eyes. “What’s the matter?” she asked, bending down to her level.

“I d-don’t feel good,” she mumbled with even less clarity than usual, illustratively holding her stomach, “Sister Constance told me to go to the ‘firmary, b-but Sister Betony w-wouldn’t let me in.” She pressed her trembling lips together as a pair of tears teetered on her eyelashes, silently beseeching Lulu to fix it somehow.

Lulu straightened. “Well, we’ll see about that. Don’t cry. Come on.” She took her by her small, clammy hand and led her to the infirmary, trying not to outpace her in her anger for fear that Yuna might think it was directed at her. The little girl was plodding mutely along beside her with her fingers in her mouth and a bleak resignation of expression, as though dreading the confrontation that lay ahead.

Sister Betony was attending a young boy who had evidently cut himself on a broken inkwell and they were forced to wait. The nun cast a darkening glance at them as Lulu led Yuna to one of the empty beds and told her to sit down. She said nothing to acknowledge them, but Lulu thought she was taking a deliberately long time salving and bandaging the boy’s hand.

At last she sent him on his way and approached, with a disapproving squint at Yuna, who sat slumped beside her with her head down and her stomach cradled in her arms, looking miserable. “You again! What are you doing back here?”

“She isn’t feeling well,” Lulu spoke for her, annoyed at having to explain the obvious, “ _Clearly_.”

Sister Betony sniffed dismissively. “You shouldn’t believe everything that child says. The Al Bhed are all liars and cheats, you know. I’m afraid she’s just trying to take advantage of your good nature.”

“I don’t have a good nature,” replied Lulu tightly, “But I was always told that the temple of Bevelle was a place of kindness and charity, and since I’ve come here I’ve seen _nothing_ of the sort.” She fancied she could feel her anger pulsing from her in waves of almost-tangible energy, and, though perhaps by only coincidence, a few potion bottles rattled on a nearby shelf. She knew the words were blasphemous right before they fired from her mouth, but it was too late to bite down on them. “It seems to me that the only lies being told are by the temple itself!”

Sister Betony drew herself up indignantly. “Young lady! I hardly expected that kind of talk from you!” Lulu clenched her hands into fists. She was surprised at herself but even more surprised to find that she wasn’t sorry. The nun wagged a warning finger at her. “Sister Meena wouldn’t be pleased to hear you say such things, I’m sure. In fact, I’ve half a mind to send both of you to her at once.”

Lulu was about to snap at her that she did not care, but Yuna gave a quavery little mew of dismay, then pitched forward and was emphatically sick all over herself, Sister Betony, and the floor. Lulu alone was spared by virtue of her quick reflexes.

“Well,” she said flatly, “She was telling the truth.”

“Oh, for Yevon’s sake!” Sister Betony whisked off her spattered apron in expression of disgust that seemed to Lulu a bit exaggerated for her station as a children’s nurse. She unceremoniously issued Yuna an empty washbasin, directed the unfortunate apprentice Sister Yvette to clean up the mess, and marched off to change her clothing.

“I’m so sorry,” Yuna mumbled palely, her face hidden by her bowed head. Lulu offered her handkerchief to her, and she took it with a sniffle, not looking up.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Come on, let’s . . . get you cleaned up.” Gingerly, she helped her out of her school uniform and threw it into the laundry basket. Underneath the badly-fitting clothes she was wearing a pretty little chemise nice enough to be a nightgown, with lace edging and a pink ribbon at the yoke. Somebody at least had once loved her enough to provide her with nice things to wear.

Lulu turned down the covers on the bed and ushered Yuna into it, unsure of what else to do for her. The healers’ arts were mostly a mystery to her, and Sister Yvette, who had finished mopping the floor, wasn’t offering any particular assistance.

“Why don’t you take a nap?” she suggested, tucking her in.

“Please don’t leave,” Yuna implored in a whisper, “Please stay with me.”

“All right.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, carefully, so as not to jostle her. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” she said, trying to be of comfort.

“It’s not that bad. My tummy hurts a lot less when you’re around.” She offered her a watery half-smile that made Lulu feel more like crying than returning it. “Lulu?”

“Hm?”

Yuna twisted the edge of the coverlet in her hands. Her round little face was colorless and taut with pain, even though she seemed to be trying to hide it. “Do you think . . . is my papa ever coming back?”

Lulu’s voice left her as though she had been punched in the chest. She opened her mouth, but the tightness behind her sternum prevented her from saying anything.

“He said he wasn’t coming back, because he was going to defeat Sin,” explained Yuna, “But, if he didn’t defeat Sin . . . does that mean he’s coming back?”

Lulu avoided her upturned, hopeful face by turning her head so that her hair fell between them. She did not want to be the one to tell her, especially now when she was already having such a terrible day, but she knew that if she didn’t, someone else inevitably would, and she did not trust anyone else to break it to her gently. “I . . . don’t think so,” she replied cautiously. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her, not wanting to see the moment when the hope left her eyes.

“Oh.” Yuna sagged back against the pillow with the attitude of a wilted flower and did not say anything else. Lulu wondered if it would have been kinder to let her hold on to empty hopes like a balloon string for a little while longer, but she reasoned with herself that the higher she got her hopes up, the farther they would have to fall when they were dashed. Yuna did not cry, or even seem particularly surprised. Lulu suspected that she had guessed the truth already, but was waiting to hear it confirmed from someone she trusted.

Searching for something reassuring to say, she raised her head and looked out the window, as though for inspiration, but the sky outside was as grey and lusterless as the slate floor beneath them. “I lost someone I loved on the pilgrimage, too,” she admitted after a silence. It was the first time she had spoken of Lady Ginnem to anyone since coming to Bevelle.

“A summoner?”

“Yes. I used to be a guardian.”

“Really?”

Lulu nodded once, not looking at her. Her throat was suddenly tight and she didn’t trust herself to say anything more without her voice betraying her. She felt little arms circle her waist in a hug, and the heavy blur of tears lapped over her vision. Inwardly she reproached herself for having gotten the conversation so turned around and brushed her eyelashes quickly with her sleeve; she was supposed to be comforting Yuna, not the other way around.

“I just meant that . . . I know what you’re going through, a little,” she said at last.

“Lulu?”

“Hm?”

“If my papa isn’t coming back . . . what’s going to happen? Is anyone . . . going to take care of me?”

Lulu hesitated. She knew she was probably the only person left alive to care about her. Since she had taken up the burden of caring she felt she had inherited some abstracted sense of obligation to her, but she didn’t know if she had the courage to be responsible for anyone other than herself again. If she had failed as a guardian to an adult summoner, how could she protect a little girl?

“. . . L-lulu?”

“What?”

“I-I think I have to throw up again.”

Lulu hastily passed her the basin, wincing as the poor kid fulfilled her prediction. But she stayed with her as she had promised, and spent the rest of the morning sitting on the edge of Yuna’s bed, reading to her quietly from a book of children’s stories she found on a shelf and holding her head over the washbasin when needed. Sister Betony eventually returned and this time, did not attempt to evict them. More out of duty than concern, she brought over a cup of medicinal tea, which she set down wordlessly on the nightstand, and then left the two girls alone.

Yuna couldn’t keep the tea down, but it seemed there was at last nothing left in her to come up, and she slipped into a thin, whimpering sleep, one hand fast in Lulu’s. Outside, the sky had been growing steadily darker under a gathering tumble of clouds, and the nuns had been obliged to light the infirmary lamps. Sister Yvette crossed to one of the open windows and pulled it shut, giving a little shiver.

“Is it chilly in here? I wonder if it’s going to storm.”

Lulu looked out the window. Below the temple, she could see the darkened skirts of Bevelle spread out to the sea, where a dim and threatening bank of black clouds lay clotted on the horizon. A low, sonorous roll of thunder rumbled over the city, and suddenly the temple bells began to toll out urgently in answer.

A chill prickled over Lulu from her scalp to her spine, as sharply as though someone had pulled her hair. Yuna twitched awake with a little moan, clutching her stomach. Sister Betony lurched to her feet.

“No, that’s no storm – Get the windows shut and latched, girl, hurry!”

She hastened over to the two children, who were both staring out at the roiling sea. Lulu had seen up close the destruction wrought by Sin twice before, but she had never seen the monster itself, and now she could not take her eyes off it. It seemed impossibly, incomprehensibly big for something so far away. Torrents of seawater big enough to capsize ships cascaded from its leviathan sides as it rose, ascending from the water with a slow, strange grace.

“Come on, dear,” ushered the nurse, and her voice had reverted to the calm, cajoling tone Lulu knew her for, “Get the little one up. That’s right. Come on.”

She had to half-carry Yuna, who wobbled like a hatchling chocobo when she tried to walk, and Sister Betony herded them into a tiny closet where the extra sheets and blankets were kept. There was just room for two children to wedge beneath the bottom shelf. “In here. You’ll be safe in here. Don’t be afraid, dear. Sin’s never managed to sink Bevelle yet. The warrior monks and Evrae will take care of it, you’ll see. But just to be safe.”

She shut the door, enclosing them in muffled darkness that smelled of clean laundry and the herbs used to keep moths away. They could hear the sliding creak of windows being shut and the scrape of furniture being dragged across the floor, and then the thin slice of light beneath the door disappeared as the two nuns outside doused the lamps.

Lulu managed to tug down a blanket from the shelf above to bundle up Yuna, who was trembling, but she wasn’t crying or complaining as she would have expected a child of her age to be. She only huddled up against her, listening in silent tension to the unseen tumult outside.

There was a stormy, hurricane sound of clashing wind and water, punctured in even intervals by the chest-thumping _pock_ of some kind of rhythmic explosion. “It’s the warrior monks,” explained Yuna’s thin and solemn voice, intuiting Lulu’s question before she put voice to it, “They use machina weapons. Yevon lets them so they can help Evrae fight Sin.”

“What is Evrae?”

“She’s a dragon. She protects Bevelle.”

“An aeon?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t actually know what she is.”

“I didn’t know Bevelle had a guardian dragon.”

“Bevelle has a lot of things. They have to keep the temple safe.”

Lulu thought of the untold number of tiny villages and towns that had been scoured from the landscape in Sin’s wake in the hundreds of years Bevelle had been kept standing. She thought of the ragged holes in the roof of the little temple that had been her home, of Lady Ginnem performing funeral rites, of the hollow clang of the old temple bell sounding out its useless warning, of the red lipstick print her mother’s last kiss had left on her cheek, which to this day she regretted wiping away with a child’s carelessness.

She could not let Yuna hear her crying. Swallowing her tears, she tried to reassert herself by reaching up and petting the little girl’s head, heavy against her shoulder. Her hair was as soft and fine as a baby’s beneath her hand. In the dark Yuna pressed her small shivering self up against her, and Lulu folded her arms around her as she had the day they had heard the news of Lord Braska’s defeat, and held her.

The approaching cloud of dissonance outside had been climbing steadily in volume as it neared, and a _basso profondo_ roar thrummed through the very stones of the temple, rattling the shelves above them, the tiles beneath them, the bones in their bodies. Both of them flinched as they heard the tall infirmary windows shatter into a hail of crackling glass, and a shriek of wind rushed chilling into the room. Yuna buried her face in Lulu’s shoulder and began to whimper.

Lulu leaned in close over her, as though that could somehow protect her better, and whispered, “I will. I’ll take care of you. I won’t leave you. I promise.” She couldn’t tell if the child heard her, but one of her small fists tightened in the handful of her blouse she was clutching, and the despairing, lost-animal sound she was making subsided.

When she could no longer bear the noise outside, Lulu shut her eyes and began to sing. It was a lullaby, with no words that she could remember, just a simple melody with a peaceful, even cadence that rocked back and forth like the sway of snowy pine trees in the mountain breeze, home and far away. Although her voice was barely audible above the clamor, she kept singing, to comfort them both as a sound like the ending of the world crashed over the city.

*

The din seemed to go on for hours. Yuna finally fell asleep only because she was exhausted, and even then it was a shallow half-sleep that faded in and out like the shadow cast by a lamp almost out of oil. She was still with Lulu, snuggled up against her for security in the dark, but in the flickering almost-dream it was not a girl beside her but a great and beautiful beast, a creature of silk and lace and fur that curved its shining self protectively around her, purring a lullaby. She leaned into its song, feeling comforted and safe for the first time in what seemed like forever. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought it was an aeon, for she could feel its melodious heart beating inside her as though it was her own.

But it made no sense for her to be an aeon, because she was going to be her guardian, when Yuna became a summoner, and they would go together to the end of the world, to the holy city of Zanarkand. They would never have to be separated.

And when they defeated Sin together, the people of Spira would finally know that a summoner they had called “heathen” and “heretic” loved them enough anyway to fight for them. They would have to love her if she brought them the Calm. They would put her statue in the temple with the other High Summoners, in the place where her father’s would have been, and everyone would know that she had done it for them.

 


End file.
